Fourth letter from Andreas to Michael
Dear Michael,
You have seen rightly, Michael, and yet, as it goes with the cleverest minds, you have touched only half the truth. Let me complete the circle you have begun.
You call it digital sovereignty. I call it by its proper name: digital dependency. For what is sovereignty that one does not exercise? An empty title, a ring without a seal. Freedom is not the absence of chains, it is the capacity to choose between paths. But he who sees only one path before him is no free man; he is an escorted traveler who believes he is marching.
You speak of our friends beyond the ocean, who have strayed from the path of partnership. I will not accuse them. It is enough to name the fact. But tell me: is what China or others do so different? Some take with the rough hand, others with the gentle one. The result, dear Michael, is the same: you are dependent.
Here, though, you strike true, and I bow to your point:
Sovereignty arises through action, not through resolution.
Sun Tzu, the most sober of all military thinkers, warns that he who recognizes the right moment does not wait for reinforcements, does not wait for favorable provisions — he acts. Translated to our situation: it is of no use to invoke European independence in documents while in reality subscribing to the next American or Chinese service.
And with that we arrive at the hardest thing I must say to you, and at the same time the most honest: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Never has that been truer than today. Freedom is not given. It is worked for, paid for, suffered for.
This means we must invest. In the knowledge of people, in research, in entrepreneurial courage but equally in the voluntary, the civic, the communal.
The politician alone cannot do it. The company alone cannot do it. It falls to each one of us.
But now to the finest paradox you have raised, perhaps without fully seeing it yourself: the idea of open source. You fear nationalism and rightly so. Yet here, if one thinks it through to the end, lies its own dissolution. Open source knows no borders. The best solution wins not because it comes from this or that country, but because it is the best. All consume, all contribute, all draw benefit. What emerges is not a nation, it is a community.
And community, dear Michael, is surprisingly in the end the very opposite of dependency.
So the circle closes: we began with dependency and end with community. That is no small journey.
Fare well and act.
Andreas
This text is an experiment: a public exchange of letters between Michael Mrak and myself, inspired by Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, in which reflections on sovereignty far beyond the digital context are developed further through dialogue.